Salome
Papillon Artisan Perfumes (2015)

A fantastic, giant jasmine… packed with so many great florals that unwind over an absolutely beastly base of moss, cumin, castoreum and hyrax.

Unique, motioning towards classic perfumery, while still singing in the very clear voice of Papillon’s style(stack this up next to Anubis and Hera to see what I mean).

Have to disagree with the review below. Nothing like Rochas Femme, really, though they both have a lot of cumin in their current form, so if you are sensitive to cumin, you might be missing the total absence of peach/prune/cinnamon that makes Femme Rochas so compelling.

If you need a classical composition to compare it to, I’d probably say Bal Al Versailles but even that is a bit of a stretch. This is a monster. But so beautiful.

Had this one been released at $50 by a businessman-owned Middle Eastern brand with an Arabic-ish name, I can already hear the voices shouting: "clone! clone! clone!". Yes... because this is what it is: a (slightly) creamier copy of Rochas Femme (the current Cresp reformulation, with a 100ml bottle going for $30 on ebay), with possibly an extra hint of hyrax.
But since it has been released by a woman-owned British brand with a French name with a nice indie (BS) story, priced at $200 for just 50ml (aka 'if it's expensive it must be niche'), I guess it's ok and we'll refrain from call it a clone, and will limit ourselves to say that it "shares some similarities"...

It's the 3rd fragrance of this house that I try, and the 3rd fragrance that "strongly reminds me" of some other fragrance. Roja Dove has made a specialty of making 'clones for rich people', so why not another brand afterall....
Hard pass for me.

Fragrance type: animalic floral/amber

While Salome is a very well-made fragrance--and quite animalic as it claims to be, I did not personally enjoy it all that much. The opening is citrus aired with a strong cumin note that quickly gives way to an indolic jasmine/amber accord. I imagine Salome as a combination of vintage Eau d'Hermes (dry cumin note) and Guerlain l'Heure Bleue (iris/amber note)--both giants in their own right.

Not bad. Surely many people will really like this. The dirtiness may be a bit hard to handle.

Salome is Herod's step-daughter. A archetypal femme fatale, a figuere of desire and doom, embracing her own destruction. She is one of the women who dance for Herod and Herodias at a birthday celebration for Herod, who doring "The dance of the seven veils" the scent of her body combines with her animalic&erotic perfume and intoxicates every man around her, and claiming as her reward the head of John the Baptist. An bloody end...this is hot sex in a bottle, the kind of sex after a night dancing and mingling with armpits after everyone's cologne mixes with a little sweet and honey and musk and amber. Animal fur, animal waste, sweaty human body. impulsive, brutal, rude, visceral, stanky, primitive, but also strange, erotically sweaty and ahhh, orgasmic in the retro style.

It start out harsh, but wait. Be patient, gives way to sweetness, the floral notes tone it down the slightest bit which ends up being a perfect balance. A bed of cernation and the most beautiful renaissance rose. There is leather here alongside the earthy, musty patchouli. There is also a slight smokey smell like a recently extinguished candle. As it dries down you get that post-coital sexy funk-still well structured though. This fragrance is an ode to musk, leather and sex. The dry down is full of art and depth. This strikes me as being the scent of a man but a woman could definitely wear it. If you don't like leathery musky animalic scents then this one is not for you because it gets right down to dirty, sweaty sex like animals in heat. The sillage is great and the longevity is insane.

PAPILLON – SALOME (2015)

Salome is a floral animalic chypre, which to my nose smells exactly like Lutens' Muscs Koublai Khan with a light jasmine/rose accord added in to lift it out of its skanky animalic depths.

In neither the Muscs nor Salome is a musk note mentioned, but they do have three notes in common: patchouli, castoreum and cumin. Muscs added ambergris and civet.

Salome has a deep birch tar note that slowly emerges, giving us the effect of Russian leather without the raw hide being treated. This is a very strong, smoky scent and not for the weak of heart, certainly not to everyone's taste. The jasmine/rose lightness does make it more endurable than the Muscs, but only just.

I liked the Lutens very much upon sampling and bought a full bottle, which took a while to use up, as I was reluctant to wear it out in public, keeping it only for private home use. It is not a go-to scent by any means, and one bottle was enough for a lifetime.

My spouse is aesthetically opposed to skank effects in perfume, so did not like Salome. He found it “not pretty, dark and murky, overwhelming, and unpleasant, strong.” He could only think of a person wearing it to a night of disco prowling, but only if definitely “on the make.”

I would like to give Salome a thumbs up, but since it is a copy of an already unique scent, I must give it a neutral rating.

Beautiful floral opening strong in jasmine mixed with musk. Sort of the same opening feel as Kiehls, but they depart pretty quickly. There is much more going on here, and at a much deeper level. The heart is a gorgeous birch tar castoreum leather feel, a bit smoky, and just really deep, and a bit dark, like a hazy dark tan color. Really something i have not run across much. It has a timeless beauty to it. It left an oil sheen where i applied it. Really just smells of high quality. Makes me want to check out other things they've done, that type of quality. Thumbs up.

Cognac-like, booze infused jasmine. Cold, stony note. Mossy oak. Mountain earth. Hints of bitter orange. Rich, thick patchouli and styrax. Rich too, are animalics, in an under-layer.

Rose is here somewhere. I cannot find her directly. I sense her voice. She must be shy. Jasmine, animals, and resinous delights continue to smooth out into a pashmina of aroma. Very well constructed perfume, this! One of the finest oriental style scents I've experienced. Excellent sillage, especially in fresh air. Very long-lasting.

Animalic notes become even deeper over time. It becomes "amber-y", too. I love it!

A fantastic nostalgic perfume. The opening is ornate and simmering (unashamedly feminine, not playing it cool or coy). It develops a delicious grrr underneath, becoming sensual and satisfying. I was going to use the word ‘coquettish' for Salome, but it is well beyond that, into the realm of vintage Tabu and Bal a Versailles.

The underlying simmer was a big cuminy spice note. Cumin can become either boorish or deliciously skanky. On my skin, Salome's cumin has a warm and opopanax-like burnished note. It isn't a b.o., rather a skanky aroma.

The other basenotes gradually coming in really connected with the cumin, developing a counterpoint to the strong emotive florals, not exactly blending but creating a sort of high-low layering. The sillage was deliciously darkened floral, but if I smelled my skin, it was predominantly cuminy, spicy basenotes. It had a drydown that developed beautifully for hours.

Salome, though a big oriental-styled fragrance, doesn't have a lot of cloying vanilla, the thing I never cared for in orientals (think 80's) and is clearer, leaner, and earthier, so it comes across somewhat floriental to me. The fragrance I think of most in relation to this is Bal A Versailles, but I believe I like Salome more. It's a little clearer and more upfront, and the florals in this are a little brighter. It's a very long lasting fragrance, continuing a full day and into the next morning. Really smashing, but it is an evening and cool weather fragrance. On my skin, the animalics get too smelly in hot weather.

I think cumin is wonderful. In FOOD.

In perfume, where it has become a go-to note for achieving a certain level of “skank,” it is almost always overpowering, obfuscating, and downright cheap-smelling.

And it pretty much ruins Salome for me.

This starts off beautifully, the initial spark of spicy florals giving way after about an hour to some sweet smoke and soft leather. After that, though, it's all cumin all the time, a shrill, one-note tune played at high volume for the next couple hours before finally exhausting itself. The musky floral of the deep dry down is nice enough, but by this time I just don't care anymore.

My full flacon just came in!

Salome is a complex, witchy brew expressly designed for erotic contemplation. Cumin and animal musks create an animalic raunch that is undeniable... Yet those of us who adore skanky perfumes will love it. While it is being compared to animalic chypres of yesteryear, no fragrance from perfumery's "Golden Age" (say, 1912--1970) ever dared to be this barnyard dirty... unambiguously so.

Texas cedar figures very prominently in this blend, and I'm surprised it's not offered as one of the notes in the above diagram for rating. There also appear to be some Indian "ayurvedic"-type notes present in this scent, not mentioned either. There is, for instance, a medicinal aromatic afoot... I think it's camphor... an unusual note I love.

Something in the opening notes smells, to me, like the potties one smelled on 1970's Greyhound buses. As in: clean trying to mask un-clean.

Fragrantica, above, lists "leather" as one of its keywords. I guess it's the styrax + castoreum they're observing.

The scent dries down to what seems to be a very...um... woman-like smell, if you catch my meaning. This scent is animalic far beyond that of Muscs Koublai-Khan, Rochas Femme, Kouros, Shalimar, Tabu, Absolue Pour Le Soir, Bal a Versailles. In fact, its only competition for skank-factor might be Brent Leonesios's NO. 8

As I hit a hot, steamy shower tonight, I got a whiff of the tobacco note: it's not fresh tobacco... no, it's stale, grey cigarette smoke, mingling with the civet. My, my-- our SALOME has been a naughty girl in so many ways. But it's intriguing, and adds a further note of audacious loucheness to the mix.

Yet Luca Turin is correct in that, this melange of notes is blended so expertly, so smoothly, that one cannot fault it... It does that classic thing of creating a unique Gestalt all its own.

But I love SALOME. I'm a guy, and will wear it happily anywhere I want. Who knew Bad could be so Good?

I dont dare say what this reminds me of😅.most skanky scent that I own. I only wear it when in a daring mood and in the right company of people that can appreciate it

This smells similar to the bottle of supremely aged Bal à Versailles in the cupboard of an old woman I know. I visit her regularly and always take a chance to sniff the bottle.

This old woman once wanted to be a rabbi but, as a woman, was not allowed official entry into the training program. Undeterred, she went anyway, uncredited, invisible yet never unnoticed, just a complete baller with ultimate self-respect who was not in the slightest interested in the approval of others, only in the path to knowledge.

Reading the reviews about crotches and sex, you might think this an odd mix with either rabbinics or the elderly. I think not. First, I smell a strong soapy note. I think this is just a genetically-determined reaction to one of the components of Salome (and Bal à Versailles), so make sure to try before you buy. I love this effect and think it blends superbly with the other ingredients. It might not be for you although it sure is better than what I guess a urine smell would be like.

Second of all, although Salome herself is depicted as an ineffective seductress in the Christian tradition, in Jewish history she was actually a serious queen. So it often is that the strong women of one tradition are portrayed as shallow sexual vampires by the (male-centred?) tradition which seeks to overwrite it. Well, you need to be a queen to wear this perfume. Some people WILL hate it and you have to rise above that and deliver with supreme confidence.

You weren't allowed in? You go anyway, and excel to the shock of everyone. That's the essence of this fragrance to me.